Thoughts on Joe Milton?

He is what we thought he was. A tall guy who can throw it over the mountains but can’t hit shit with it.  

He has no receivers. No separation. No jump balls. No corner fades.

They absurdly targeted All about a dozen times which exasperated me greatly.

I thought Milton was pretty good... the lack of deep balls and maybe forcing things a little are some of the questions for sure.

Not sure if deep balls are being called, but i think i saw one this game? You have to try at least to threaten the deep ball; arm strength isn't an issue - its whether he has the touch

Milton has been as good as could be expected as a first time starter - i never believed the camp hype anyways, but he has been solid game manager in his first two games

edit - he does seem to lock in on receivers at times, but again, as a first time starter that's expected to some degree.

I think he is still better than Shea

Still has long ball accuracy issues and some questionable decisions. 
 

the problem is I don’t think the long ball accuracy issue won’t be fixed this year. 
 

one has to wonder what caused him to beat out Dylan 

In fairness, too soon to say. But he does have 4 years of eligibility left including this season, correct? Covid related. Is that a good thing?

His reads today were horrific. How many times did you see him hand off to the back up the middle only to get stuffed where if he would have kept it he had an open lane to the edge. In that regard he reminded me of Shea last year. It truly is a hope and a prayer when he has to throw the ball over 10 yards. Urban was exactly right with his comments saying the way to beat Michigan right now is to stack the line and force Milton to beat you which today he proved incapable of doing. This will be all defensive coordinators game plans moving forward until he proves he can do something about it. Todays performance was absolutely below average and too many more days like this should determine plan B.

You can't put a 1st year QB in 3rd and longs because you were too stubborn to do anything but try to run up the gut on 2nd and  long  after it didn't worked for the 10th time.  Of all the things that went wrong today, I'm the least concerned about Milton personally.  There's many more problems at hand and it starts with the coaching.

Where were the screen passes to keep an aggressive MSU defense off balance?  Nice easy throw for Milton to get a rhythm going.  He did fairly well considering how much was put on his shoulders because the play calling didn't do him much favors and there were too many drops by our WRs.

He's good. 0 turnovers.  Pretty strong arm, good runner, threw some good passes today with a few bad drive killing drops.  He has 2 career starts and will improve.   Agree he faced way too many third and longs today. 

He needs more experience. He was forced to make 50+ throws today because of the incomprehensible running game. He was trying to force the ball into double coverage when the check-down option was wide open. He'll learn. But he's not there yet. I'd like to say he'll be much better next year, but Shea and Speight both regressed, so who knows.

Joe regressed bigly today. All of his throws down field weren’t even close to being completed. OSU is going to absolutely napalm us into the 19th century. 

I was actually impressed by him in his 2nd start. He didn’t cower under pressure, kept his eyes downfield, and only forced a couple of throws. He ran ok and had good ball security. The bigger issue was the game plan didn’t give him many easy throws to the edge or downfield.

One area to keep improving: he still gunned a couple of throws that made the catch too difficult. Like the rollout in Q1 on 2nd and 18 that he threw too hard and low for All. Throwing low was ok since he was throwing across the grain to minimize the risk of an INT or All getting lit up but it was too hard for All to adjust and catch.

I thought he was fine. Deep routes aren't really as high percentage normally as Rocky and Ricky made them seem. He ran hard but rarely by design. He does appear to have only one speed on his throws, but I can live with that.

If I had to rank the concerns about today's performances, Milton wouldn't be in my top 5, maybe top 10.

2 Games
47 / 73 (64%) 525 yards (11.1 yds avg) 1 TD and 0 turnovers plus 20 rushes for 111 yards (5.5 yds per carry) and 1 TD. 

For comparison last year Shea was 56% passer and 8 yds per pass. Dylan was 50% and 5.8 yds

Average to above average,  just like the program 

He played as expected for his experience. The WRs were shit.  The OL was subpar. Gattis needs to figure out the ‘spread’ and fast.  He is inconsistent as a coach. 

I feel for the guy, but I'm a mom that way. One of his biggest issues seems to be that he doesn't have a ton of confidence and I don't know if that's something you can teach. I don't know how much one can improve without that piece.  

Let's not throw him under the bus after 1 bad game (mostly not his fault).

He is who we thought he would be.

strong arm, questionably accurate, inexperienced QB who struggles to make the right read.

I know buck stops at the main man but Gattis play calling today was so odd and on top of that Milton was missing the easy check downs to get in some type of groove.  He looked like a freshman in his first rivalry game no doubt about it  

All up this was just bad and embarrassing. And everyone should feel that way for a bit until they start Indiana prep. Just bad  

they made those WRs look like the best Dantonio years WRs. Just sad. 

ALL the coaches did their players zero favors today.  All of them. 
 

yeah it’s a weird stupid season, and year...but if this is a season to see what we got next year ....uhhh. What we supposed to think? 
 

barf ? 

He showed that he is the 3 star QB we knew he was. He's a big and not very quick QB, and is a very in accurate passer. Dylan must of really fell off the wagon not to be our starter and I blame Harbaugh and his staff for this.

He's a game manager--51 throws to get 300 yards. Remember last week, he threw 0 passes with Michigan behind in the game. The last drive was a bunch of check-downs when he needed to take a shot or two down the field.

It's his second start. He is better than I thought he would be and he does have potential if he can take another big leap this off-season. But he doesn't project as a difference maker in my opinion

Miltons fine. The constant run that everyone knew was coming, and went nowhere, wasn’t. We had success running outside and chose to not go there. If this was Gattis he needs fired, same with Harbaugh. Just a lethargic pathetic display. 

When every play starts behind the line of scrimmage your basically fucked. This was on Gattis, even more on Harbaugh for signing off on this shit gameplan. Although running into a stacked front relentlessly seemed very Harbaugh like. 

I heard he can throw it 75 yards.  Haven’t seen it....but I heard it. 

For a quarterback playing in his second game, with no running game ( except him) , not much protection, 3rd and long all day, some drops and no interceptions I think he did fine. What do we think he should do ? 

For a quarterback playing in his second game, with no running game ( except him) , not much protection, 3rd and long all day, some drops and no interceptions I think he did fine. What do we think he should do ? 

my thoughts on this radically disappointing game.....

I still think Gemon Green will be a good one, would have loved to have him opposite Ambry, Vincent Gray might be one of those guys who finally gets it his 3rd or 4th year, but as the game went on Gray seemed to be the one giving up more big yards and penalties.

Ability to throw downfield when the box is stacked is a big concern as it has been in the past. 

I think we win easily most any other time we play them, especially if we had Nico and Ambry on the roster.

also, it seemed like 4 of our top players got injured 

This is when it would have been nice to have a few more warmup games before a rivalry. Once our young corners were in their head and our QB had no real security blanket outside of Charnonnet dump offs, it was only a matter of the clock beating us and too little too late. 

Positives....no turnovers in what must have been tons of stress on Joe Milton

we made a FG

Negatives....we lost to a far inferior team due to a bunch of deep balls, please please start playing more zone this year

There is a reason why he was 3rd string last year. He locks onto 1st read and his accuracy still needs work. There is a reason why Gattis protected him and can't afford to be in unfavorable downs/distance where Milton has to dropback to pass. The more he has to dropback to pass, the more he gets into trouble because he leaves clean pocket or has to make decision at the top of the drop. If given a favorable down/distance, he's fine since Gattis can call more RPO based playcalls like he did against Minnesota. One good example is 1st drive against Minnesota where Milton had to drop back on 3rd and long and left a clean pocket to run himself into a sack. WRs drop balls in part he was inaccurate and in part that all he does is throw fastballs. Arm strength is there, his athleticism is there but accuracy and mental processing aren't there and that's an important part of being a QB. Luckily, he's only RS Sophmore that he can get better.

Makes me wonder why Dylan McCaffery decided to transfer without actually ever practice with the team. How did Milton jump ahead of him?

Everything I feared about him came true today. Not accurate enough, showed a lack of confidence, and is just not ready for the big stage.

With high quality coaching around him, he’ll be good.  Hopefully the next guy will provide it.

I'll say this about Milton: his 100 mph heaters probably saved us a couple interceptions this afternoon. 

I guess he's not some hybrid of Cam Newton and Vince Young.